ETIs and major groups with an international presence now want to clearly identify and rationalize their promotional products purchases: promotional items, business gifts, premiums, incentives and merchandising. However, the decentralization of these budget lines, the differences in accounting allocations between countries, and the desire of local teams to retain control over their purchases, make it difficult, to say the least, to assess the budget envelopes actually allocated to promotional products within the same international group. Those who manage to do so have to solve a complex equation, taking into account the group’s culture, the number of brands, marketing and communication objectives, the volume of investments made (etc.), in order to choose their purchasing model. Frédéric Misseri, co-founder of Synneo and Prominate (present in over 50 countries), offers an insight into the issues and challenges involved in a successful promotional products buying optimization strategy.
